Singer and songwriter Cody Carnes says the chart-topping hit The Blessing was birthed during a late-night songwriting session that nearly didn't happen yet ended with him and others believing God had dropped "a song in the room."
The Blessing was released just before the pandemic in March 2020 and quickly climbed to No. 1 on Billboard's Christian digital song sales chart, staying there for 11 weeks and on the chart for more than 100 weeks. A music video that launched on YouTube that same month has tallied 78 million views. It features Carnes, his wife Kari Jobe and Elevation Worship performing it live.
It was written by Carnes, Jobe, Chris Brown and Steven Furtick and is based on Numbers 6:22-26, the so-called "priestly blessing."
"We had actually ... already writing for eight hours, and we wrote a different song earlier that day, and we were kind of wrapping up getting ready to go home, and this idea happened," Carnes told Sadie Robertson Huff during an episode of the Whoa That's Good Podcast. "So we stayed longer. We stayed till about midnight that night. And it just felt like the glory of God came in the room in a different way all of a sudden. … You do feel like, 'Okay, this feels really powerful to us in this moment. And we know that God is here.' But there is such a mystery to it still of you having no idea what a song is going to do."
The Blessing went viral during the pandemic without the assistance of tours or live concerts. All the credit for the song's popularity, Carnes said, goes to God.
"God does what He does. It's only Him. And it's unbelievable to watch," Carnes added. "... We were literally so removed from any part of that song going around the world because we were in lockdown. We wrote the song a week and a half before the country shut down. And we released it like a week before the country shut down on YouTube. And so we didn't write it in lockdown. It was not a result of, 'Here's where we are.' It was literally this moment where God just chose to drop a song in a room. And we had no idea what was coming. ... You really just feel like you get to be a part of something that God is doing."
The goal of writing Christian music, Carnes said, is to "chase the glory of God with your friends." He said he has sung and spoken the words from The Blessing over his own family.
"I would have moments where I'm like, 'I can't believe I got to be a part of writing this because this song is ministering to our family in this moment.' Like, we're trying to get through these waves of fear and uncertainty, and we're singing this over our kids at night, and we're clinging to the promises of God," Carnes told Huff.
"... We just say, 'Thank You, Jesus, that You gave something in that season to carry us through.'"
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Terry Wyatt/Stringer
Video courtesy: ©Elevation Worship
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
